Celebrating our 90^th anniversary in 2012, St Andrew’s Children’s Society is a leading adoption agency working in Scotland.  Our services are flexible and responsive to the widely differing needs of the children themselves and of the individuals, couples and families seeking to adopt.  We welcome adopters from the broad spectrum of society, regardless of ethnic origin, religious persuasion or sexual orientation.

There are far more children in need of adoption or fostering than there are suitable homes for them.  St Andrew’s Children’s Society plays a key role in helping to maximise opportunities for adoption and fostering in Scotland, enabling many children to make a new start in life. But, our work does not end there.

Thankfully, very few adoptions prepared and arranged by St Andrew’s Children’s Society end in disruption (breakdown) - but many adoptions do. In 2009, 20% of adoptions in Scotland arranged by local authorities ended in disruption, with children being returned to local authority care

Our core services focus on:

• Adoption Process – suitable adoptive parents are selected after initial assessment, followed by training and evaluation. Extensive checking, interviews and independent references enables an independent assessment panel to decide suitability. Once satisfied of the suitability, the task of placing children with parents can begin. In the last year we placed 40 children with 30 families.
• Post Adoption Support – provides group and one to one support in the early stages of adoption, helping to smooth the early steps towards becoming a family. It also works on a more in-depth basis where later difficulties arise, working with both the parents and children to make a success of the adoption.
• SafeBase - a parenting training programme for adoptive parents experiencing severe difficulties in parenting their children, owing to early experiences affecting their attachments. Over three years of development, SafeBase will be become available throughout Scotland.

The first year of programmes of training with 21 families in Edinburgh has just ended, with all involved, families and trainers unanimous in their feelings that all adoptive parents should have access to SafeBase training.